Tabernacle Cemetery

Taken By: Leah D. Lichtenberg

Tabernacle Cemetery, established ca. 1812, is significant as an early cemetery in the Tabernacle community of what was then Abbeville District, and for its association with many prominent citizens of Abbeville and Edgefield Districts and later Greenwood County as well, from the early nineteenth through the twentieth centuries. The cemetery is the last extant historic resource associated with the Tabernacle community. George Connor (1759-1827) and his wife Anna Woolfolk Connor (1762-1825) owned the land that became the center of the Tabernacle community. The Connors came to South Carolina from Virginia and settled here shortly after the American Revolution. Most of the land on which the communities of Tabernacle, Cokesbury, and Mt. Ariel were later established was owned by George Connor. Tabernacle Cemetery is also an excellent intact example of an early nineteenth through mid-twentieth century cemetery reflecting typical burial customs and gravestones of the period. Most graves date from ca. 1812 to ca. 1950. The cemetery contains approximately 132 marked graves, with headstones, footstones, and a few plot enclosures of granite, marble, fieldstone, or soapstone. Most gravestones are marble or granite tablets although obelisks and brick tombs are also present. The Tabernacle Cemetery continued to serve the citizens of the Mount Ariel and Cokesbury communities well into the twentieth century. Listed in the National Register August 1, 2008.

The National Register of Historic Places - South Carolina Department of Archives and History